Crisscross Signal Spire

Artist:

Location:

Location

Neighborhood:

Dudley Square

Type:

Interactive Sculpture

Year:

2015

Medium:

Stainless Steel and LED lighting

Collection:

Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building

Funders:

City of Boston

Description:

Crisscross Signal Spire, an elegant form in daylight hours, becomes a dynamic light sculpture each night. The light symbolizes the relationship between constituents and the City of Boston, as it changes based on use of the 311 application. A fusion of citizen engagement, interactive technology, and a nod to Boston's history, Crisscross Signal invites viewers to interact with the sculpture's light performance by tweeting #signalspire.

Meejin Yoon took inspiration from the City's history of using beacons of light to communicate information.

The Crisscross Signal Spire marks Dudley Square as an historic urban crossroads and acts as a sculptural beacon that ties past traditions to present-day communication habits. Taking cues from the role of church spires and clock towers, which communicated and marked time through bell chimes or illuminated clock faces, the Crisscross Signal Spire creates a contemporary, three-dimensional impetus for Boston’s municipal government and its citizens. The spire uses real-time lighting and digital interfaces to translate open-source on-line content from the Citizen's Connect system into a pattern of lighting behavior.

The structure of the spire is a braided array of tubes woven together to create an expressive, self-buttressing bundled tower. The tubes converge and diverge to evoke imagery of railway crossings, such as the MBTA subway network, and also act as a vertical timeline of Boston’s transformation from three distinct towns into a city of 21 neighborhoods. Roxbury, one of the three original towns, is geographically central within the bundling of Boston neighborhoods, which speaks to its relationship with the larger metropolitan community. Crisscross Signal Spire projects city’s geographic genesis onto the future of Boston’s growth, exchange, movement, and communication.

Yoon’s dramatic, contemporary approach to envisioning public art in Dudley Square promises to create a cultural beacon for the Roxbury area and will be a stunning addition to the City of Boston’s public art collection. Both living and working in the Leather District, Yoon, a Principal at Höweler + Yoon Architecture LLP / MY Studio and an Associate Professor at MIT, has been an involved Bostonian for over a decade. Her works have explored how technologies can transform architecture and the public realm, as well as how media can act as a material and a medium for contemporary art practice.